How to turn off USB charge?

Is there a way to turn off USB charge completely?

There is manager that allows me to set power-off charging only when the notebook is plugged in or even when it's on battery, but with a certain battery level. But no "turn off completely".

The thing is, this is my only USB 3 port, and my external driver is connected to it. But I don't want it running day and night, and unplugging/replugging it is just a pain.

Config: Win7-64 Acer Aspire 8951G

Some clarification:

I have an external HDD that gets it power from the USB port. Even if I turn of the computer, the HDD won't shut down, because there's "power-off charging" on that port. This is my only USB3 port, so using an other port is not an option.

shinjin

Posted 2012-11-26T08:03:41.017

Reputation: 223

Your question is a bit hard to follow. You don't want what running day and night? Do you mean an external drive? If so, does it actually have its own battery? If not, how could it ever charge? – David Schwartz – 2012-11-26T09:39:44.727

Answers

If you have an Acer laptop there's "Acer USB Charge Manager" - an excellent application you can download from Acer.com. It allows you shut down the charging on the USB 3.0 port when you turn your laptop off. (I had the same problem as you - fan still running on an external USB laptop cooler, even after shutting the laptop off, or even in hybernate mode. Highly annoying and my only solution until I found the Acer USB Charge Manager was to pull the USB cable out)

Andreas - Malta

Posted 2012-11-26T08:03:41.017

Reputation: 26

You can disable it from BIOS. Under the Advanced or Power Settings menu.

Hasan Hüseyin Çakır

Posted 2012-11-26T08:03:41.017

Reputation: 169

I don't have anything like that in the BIOS setup. – shinjin – 2012-12-02T23:48:38.273

Guessing from the sounds of it that there's no power source for the drive. If this is the case, you can go into control panel, click power options. In the top left corner click "choose when to turn off the display" at the bottom of that page there should be some text that says "change advanced power settings", click that.

Set it to balanced (or leave it what it's set to) and on this list you can set more specific settings for your devices/etc. Turn off hd after x minutes may solve your problem, not sure. Basically anytime after x minutes that there's no data transferred between that drive, it auto goes in to a sort of sleep mode I guess is one way to put it.

I'm not 100% sure this prevents it from charging, but it's a place to start.

I have software that came with my MyBook from WD that lets me right click the programs icon in the system tray and disconnect it from the computer. Not physically of course, but I think it basically removes the device sorta like unplugging it I guess. Might have something like that you could install for your device if it's a hard drive anyway, you weren't very clear on that.

Codezilla

Posted 2012-11-26T08:03:41.017

Reputation: 828